We Need To Laugh About Kevin

Know your chicken…

head of his Whale show on Saturday, May 25th, we asked funnyman Kevin McGahern to dig deep for his comedy roots and his comedy heroes…

The young McGahern

And, being the stand up guy that he is, the lad delivered…

I was always interested in comedy. As a kid I had zero interest in sports, so the most important things in my life were movies and cartoons.

I decided to study animation in college because I enjoyed drawing comics and making people laugh with silly drawings.

It was during college that I discovered the stand up scene in Dublin.

Before this the idea of stand up as a career just seemed completely unattainable. It was like saying you planned on being an astronaut or a race car driver. But after landing a job in The International Bar, and watching 3 or 4 people get up on stage every night, comedy seemed a little less daunting. I asked around and was told to head down to The Battle of the Axe open mic night to enter their competition. After winning 3 times in a row, i gained the confidence to call myself a stand up comedian.

Now, on to those influences…

Looney Tunes
When asked what your comedic influences are, the temptation is to say something that makes you sound intelligent like Flann O’Brien or Oscar Wilde but if i’m truly being honest my first and most enduring comedic influence is probably the cartoons of Looney Tunes. These cartoons were like wee pearls you’d find scattered around the TV schedule. If there was a film on at 6 O’clock they might show a cartoon or two before it to bump it down the schedule so it’d finish just in time for the football at 8. I loved Looney Tunes.

Disney cartoons were all doe eyed cuteness and cuddles; Looney Tunes were dynamite and shotguns, explosions and falling anvils. They were violent and anarchic and to a child in the early ’90s, they were as hilarious and fresh as they were to a child watching them in the 1940s.

Father Ted
The TV show that had its biggest influence on me as a kid was probably Father Ted. I had never seen anything like Father Ted before. It was the comedic equivalent of the arrival of The Beatles. We would come into school on a Monday and recite jokes to each other. I would draw cartoon portraits of characters that were mentioned on the show but never seen, like The Beast or Father WIndy Shepard Henderson. Ted had an impact and and influence on me that still resonates to this day. The entire country became funnier because of Father Ted. It was like that scene at the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey when the monkeys all rub that big monolith and get smarter than the other monkeys.

The Butcher Boy
I think the film that had the biggest influence on me was The Butcher Boy. I was about 11 when the film came out and my parents snuck me in to see it in Mullingar cinema. I sat transfixed by what I saw on the screen. Atomic bombs in Monaghan, priests with alien heads, cursing Virgin Marys, talking pigs, murder and mayhem; I was blown away by the images I saw that night.

My parents were not as impressed, grunting disapprovals as we left the cinema. But I was forever changed. Before this, Irish films to me were The Quiet Man or The Field. I never thought you could make something set in a small town in Ireland, set in your hometown, and fill it full of images of madness. It was that combo I found so inspiring. Brian Friel directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Steve Martin
I have a few comedians that have influenced me heavily. When i was starting off I really wanted to be like Steve Martin. In the ’70s when everyone was doing political comedy he decided to go in the opposite direction and do something closer to a demented children’s entertainer. His comedy was very very silly. But it takes a true genius to play a true buffoon and Steve Martin was a genius. My favourite late night appearance by Steve Martin was his piece The Great Flidini on The Tonight Show.

Norm MacDonald
I like the fearlessness of Norm MacDonald. The ability to say a joke and truly not care if the audience laughed or not. I liked how he hid his intelligence on stage. He would always come across as the dumbest man in the room when most of the time the opposite was closer to the truth. He had a fierce intelligence but realiSed nobody wants to hear comedy from a smart guy. Also there’s way more room for laughs when you play the fool.

Tommy Tiernan
But if I’m honest i think the biggest influence on me comedically is probably Tommy Tiernan. When i first got a copy of his stand up VHS in secondary school it was like a bomb went off in my head. Before this I wasn’t a big fan of irish stand up. A lot of them seemed old fashioned and relied on one liners. But Tommy was so young and exciting. And he had a danger to him too.

You didn’t want your parents to catch you watching him. He was punk rock. And like punk rock, he inspired a generation to pick up a mike and give it a shot. We all owe Tommy a fair bit.

You can catch Kevin McGahern’s new stand-up Shy Talker at The Whale on Saturday, May 25th – tickets here. You can find out more about the McGahern lad over here.